Antivaccine activists gleefully attack and dox a 12-year-old boy who made a pro-vaccine video

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the antivaccine movement, it’s that its members dislike being criticized. Oh, hell, let’s be honest. The really, really hate criticism and react very, very badly to it. Whereas you or I or other skeptics might react to criticism by trying to address it using facts, science, and reason, the first reaction of many antivaccine loons is to attack, attack, attack.

They use a variety of methods to attack. One of their very favorite methods of attack when faced with a pseudonymous blogger is to do everything they can to “out” him or her, revealing name and place of employment, so that they can harass him or her at work. I’ve been subject to this sort of treatment multiple times over the last 11 years, most recently by one of the quackiest of all Internet quacks, who has intentionally dragged my cancer center into his attacks on me, trying to link me to a criminal oncologist who was convicted of Medicare fraud for making tens of millions of dollars administering chemotherapy to patients who didn’t need it, many of whom didn’t even have cancer. Back in 2010, I was subjected to a letter-writing campaign to the dean and board of governors of my university to try to get me fired. Fortunately, in both cases, my university and cancer center stood by me. Another favored method is to abuse Facebook reporting algorithms to get Facebook to issue temporary bans to pro-science vaccine advocates. They even brag about how they do it. Cyberstalking and harassment are their modus operandi. Don't believe me? Ask Renee.

I had always thought, though, that there were limits. I started to learn I was wrong a couple of years ago when antivaccine activists harassed a group of high school students in Carlsbad, CA who had made a pro-vaccine documentary as part of their broadcast class. I thought that was as low as antivaccinationists would go. I was wrong. In fact, just this week I realized just how wrong I had been when I learned about the case of a 12-year-old Mexican boy named Marco Arturo. Arturo, as you might have heard, made this viral video:

This video now has over 7 million views. I love this kid.

As I said when I saw this video, I think I see a future contributor to my not-so-super-secret other blog. In fact, the only criticism I got for saying that was that I said I saw him potentially contributing in five or ten years, and people thought he could potentially be contributing now.

Now, you might think that antivaccinationists might at least try to be nicer while addressing Arturo’s wonderfully sarcastic characterization of vaccine-autism pseudoscience. He is, after all, a 12-year-old kid. In the world of adults, it is (or should be) considered unseemly to “beat up” on a 12-year-old kid. It’s too much “punching down,” and punching down is generally an indication of weakness.

Indeed, before I discuss the reactions of the antivaccine movement to Arturo further, I can’t help but remember my interactions with one “boy wonder” of the antivaccine movement, Jake Crosby. When I first encountered him online, he was in high school. By the time he was in college, I felt the need to rebut some misinformation he started spreading about the ScienceBlogs blog network, but I was very conscious of the fact that he was at the time (I believe) a freshman in college and “on the spectrum” as well. So if you go back and read my original two deconstructions of his conspiracy-laden posts, you’ll notice that I treated Crosby with kid gloves. It wasn’t until much later, when Crosby was the one to publish a libel-filled post about me accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest, which was what precipitated the letter-writing campaign against me in 2010, that I felt comfortable taking the gloves off dealing with him. When I actually met him in person after a talk in 2013, after which he called me a liar during the “meet and greet” that I did afterward, I simply said, “We’re done,” and walked away. I might not have acquitted myself as well as I would have liked to, but by this time he was finishing college. He was a young man. I felt comfortable treating him like a man, and when a fully grown man or woman launches unjustified criticisms at me, I will respond.

Thinking of Arturo, I wondered how I would have described if Jake had been 12 years old when I first encountered him and had, for example, made an antivaccine version of a video like Arturo’s. Certainly, I wouldn’t have treated him the way antivaccine loons have been treating Arturo. In fact, antivaccine loons have been absolutely losing their mind over Arturo’s video. For example, this meme collects some of the attacks:

As a commenter put it, antivaccine beliefs must be incredibly fragile if a 12-year-old posting a snarky video to YouTube can threaten them so much. Most twelve year old kids would likely be intimidated by such a barrage of criticism and hatred, but Arturo handled it well:

When I was twelve, I was reading The Lord of the Rings and other science fiction/fantasy novels, doing my schoolwork, building model airplanes and rockets, and trying—and, truth be told, failing miserably—to be halfway decent at playing baseball and soccer. Of course, the Internet didn’t really exist then (at least, it was only available to a few academics at universities); so it’s impossible to tell what I would have been doing if I were 12 today, but you get the point.

Of all the antivaccinationists who made a run at Marco Arturo, the craziest of the crazy, the one who lost her mind way more than any other, the one who isn’t the least bit embarrassed about punching down and harassing a kid was the pseudonymous antivaccine blogger who goes by the ‘nym Levi Quackenboss. We’ve met her before. She has a history of going ballistic over pro-vaccine advocacy, such as when she lost it over an uncontroversial and rather bland CDC social media campaign promoting vaccination. More recently, she was blaming the Zika virus outbreak on—wait for it!—vaccines.

Look, clearly you’re a smart kid in your knockoff Polo shirt and your eyeglasses that look like wraparound safety goggles. I trust that one day you’re going to figure out that you’ve been lied to, not only by your parents but by your government and the leaders of this world, and you’re going to look back on this insulting video and say, “God, what a little prick I was.”

And that’s OK, Marco. We’ll be here for you when you do.

PS

I do love how the people who are outraged that anyone would “attack a 12 year old child” are the same people who lobby for 12 year old children to legally consent to multiple vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases and hormonal birth control so that they can enjoy their sex lives without their parents knowing. Which is it?

Calling a 12-year-old boy a “prick” while making snide comments about him being a nerd? Stay classy, Quackenboss. Stay classy. As for the last analogy, it just shows you where Quackenboss is coming from, and it’s not a good place. She’s perfectly happy to compare apples to oranges to justify her attacking a 12-year-old, of punching down, and she does so cowering behind a pseudonym. (And, before anyone mentions my pseudonym, I’ll point out that my real identity is one of the worst-kept secrets of the skeptical blogosphere and that Quackenboss can find my name on this very blog very easily, should she so desire.) Hypocrisy, thy name is Quackenboss, particularly given that she never blogs under her real name and even does interviews anonymously with friendly quack outlets like Health Nut News. It’s hard not to conclude that she is, as she called Arturo, a prick, particularly when she writes:

So who is Marco? I’m not going to post his full name out of respect for him and his parents as well as their safety, but they’ve been a little sloppy about making trails to it so they should clean that up. The last names his parents use are not the name that he uses on social media. Marco has been giving oratory performances like movie monologues since he was an adorable small child, as seen on his mom’s Youtube page, and which, as a commenter said on my last post, is common in the culture. He has a self-published book on Astronomy that came out last year. He was invited to give a speech on Science and Technology in his town.

As Karen Ernst notes, yes, Marco Arturo didn’t use his full name, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t known. It’s just rather long.

Next up, Quackenboss was particularly angered by a meme going around showing Marco Arturo “dropping the mic”:

Apparently it is not obvious to 50,000 people on this planet that 12-year old Marco in Mexico is pretending to be the Wizard of Autism while his parents are behind the keyboard, catfishing every idiot who wants to believe he’s a boy genius.

He’s a smart kid, no doubt, especially for his ability to talk a mile a minute in a second language, and the apparent talent he has for a good rant, although only after it’s heavily edited to take out any downtime. I’m sure he’s even smarter than that, but you have to be a new kind of gullible to believe for one moment that this child is firing off the retorts attributed to his name on his Facebook page.

Think for a second about what you were doing when you were 12. I was catching crawdads in the creek, riding my bike, and maybe once or twice that summer I looked at tadpole eggs under my microscope.

And:

So people, you’re not interacting with Marco. You’re not reading Marco. Even in the video, you’re not truly listening to Marco. His parents have made him into a pawn. They tell him what to believe and what to say, then edited it to make him look like a debate genius. Marco, as you think you know him, does not exist. The only true Marco on Facebook is the one talking about his love of little green lizards.

She also asks, “You know what I wasn’t doing?” after which she expresses extreme incredulity that it is a 12-year-old kid writing the responses to the antivaccine loons attacking him. She can’t imagine that he can use words that big or write as well as he does (or troll antivaccine twits like her as expertly as he does). Well, I’m sorry Levi Quackenboss wasn’t as intelligent and well-educated when she was 12 as Arturo is, but I can say that I could write almost as well as Arturo when I was 12 or 13, and had social media and the Internet existed back then, allowing me to type and instantly edit what I write, I might have been as good as he is. There's no way of knowing. (Or I probably wouldn't have been; apparently Arturo has already written a book on evolution.) What I do know is that there are exceptional 12 year olds like Marco Arturo. Why does Quackenboss have trouble believing it? Could it be...racism? After all, she does spend a lot of her incredulity in her posts about Arturo not believing a kid from Mexico could be so smart and implying (hell, outright saying) that he must be being manipulated or serving as nothing more than an actor reading lines written by adults.

In case you missed it, on May 30th Ashton Kutcher shared Marco’s video as a story on Kutcher’s media site A Plus. By then it was starting to go viral, so it’s no surprise that Kutcher’s Buzzfeed-like website picked it up, right?

Maybe. Maybe they came across it on their own. Maybe on May 30th it was just good fortune that this previously unknown 12-year old in Mexico had someone notify him about Ashton Kutcher’s Facebook status when he was standing by with his smartphone, because that kid shared Kutcher’s post within 21 minutes of it going up. A pretty impressive social media sprint for an unknown kid, but whatever.

What set her off was this post:

Which she characterized as ““Ho hum, here we go again with an American celebrity sharing my homemade backyard video to his 17 million followers.” Oddly enough, I didn’t see it that way. It seemed like a happy post. Quackenboss makes much of the fact that this post had been live since May 27 and Arturo’s Facebook post was dated May 30, leading her to ask, “How did Ashton Kutcher’s company already know about Marco on May 27th? Hardly anyone had even seen the two videos on Marco’s page because the page didn’t exist until May 24th.”

Arturo’s video had been posted his own video to his own page a mere 24 hours before, on May 24. Quackenboss makes much of how Arturo’s video had only started to “go viral,” but A Science Enthusiast (ASE) has a very popular Facebook page, with nearly 140,000 likes. Did it ever occur to her that it was ASE’s sharing Arturo’s video that was a major factor in making it go viral? Of course not. That wouldn’t feed her conspiracy theory. It’s profoundly dumb to wonder how Ashton Kutcher’s website could possibly have discovered Arturo’s video after it had been up for three days, particularly given that it shared it a mere two days after a large pro-science Facebook page had shared it. It’s the Internet, for cryin’ out loud! Three days—even two days—is a time period that might as well be a lifetime! That’s how fast things move.

Be that as it may, Quackenboss is convinced that Ashton Kutcher’s website, Arturo’s family, and Walgreens were all in cahoots to deliver pro-vaccine propaganda to the masses. (Gee, she says that as though it were a bad thing.) She repeats that claim in a post from yesterday, complete with a video.

The doxing included in the Quackenboss post included the names of his stepfather and his mother and some employment information regarding his stepfather. A screenshot of the stepfather’s Facebook page included the name of their hometown. This information not only makes it easy to harass Marco and his family, but collating together could incite that harassment.

Update: for everyone crying that gathering information from public records and social media is “doxing” and illegal, you’re better off filing a class action against Radaris, US Search, ZoomInfo and Intelius– and they would provide the private Facebook page, address and phone number that I didn’t. Educate yourselves or take your tears elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s illegal. That doesn’t mean that it’s right or honorable. It isn’t. It also doesn’t mean that I can’t justifiably say that Quackenboss is a cowardly, despicable, vile and hypocritical human being, worthy of nothing more than my utter contempt (which is all she gets) for posting this information with the obvious intent to incite harassment of Marco Arturo and his family. Then she drops a conspiracy theory, without any evidence or justification, that Dr. Gerardo Ochoa Vargas is really behind Arturo’s posts. Meanwhile, the merry band of antivaccine activists at that wretched hive of scum and quackery, Age of Autism, are loving this.

I’ll tell you what, Ms. Quackenboss. Post your attacks under your own name—your real name—and maybe I’ll find you somewhat less odious. On second thought, I probably won’t. But at least I probably wouldn’t find you to be quite as massive a hypocrite as I do now. I would be laughing at your idiocy now, but you're just to nasty a piece of work for that in this case.

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I've been doxed a couple of times, with one occasion having the doxer also have the poor graces to threaten to kill everyone in my home.
Being one who is legendary for poor reactions to being threatened, I explained my military background, my military occupational specialty, my proficiency with hand to hand combat, edged weapons and the fact that I am a competition shooter and small arms expert and that whoever came onto my property with harm in mind would depart in two bags.
I also explained that only if I were feeling charitable would a firearm be used, which would be quite unlikely.
The individual in question broke off contact.

Hmm, what was I doing at age 12? Well, I had testing that showed my vocabulary, reading rate and comprehension was junior college level, I was in the electron microscope club at school (the school district had a handful of electron microscopes donated to it) and was repairing radios as a hobby.

I see Bob the wannabe libertarian is up to his old tricks. (IIRC this Bob is one of our old trolls; the beliefs and arguments fit, anyway)
Calling a kid posting youtube videos a "misfit"? OK, as a real misfit myself, I just needed this reminder that he is a waste of molecules.
Marco, you said in your answer you had 4 passes already at trying to make him understand. Don't bother. Here at RI, the regulars tried for a decade and didn't made a dent.

As for Quackenboss, I would believe she has a few issues of her own. Well, her little rant about Gardasil and the pill seems to indicate she is uncomfortable considering that teenagers may have sex.

so that they can enjoy their sex lives without their parents knowing

Correction.
Her issue is with teenagers having sex, enjoying it and not getting punished for it by catching HIV or becoming pregnant.
I'm heroically resisting the urge to crack a ribald joke about the "without their parents knowing" part.
Because, well, I'm not sure I approve of Quackenboss discussing teenager sex with a 12-year old on the internet.

I have to be careful, I'm not objective here. Watching big bullies taking on a bespectacled kid who is also a well-read science enthusiast brings back bad memories.
Although I was never that articulate and didn't publish any book.
Yes, I have a new hero. You rock, boy. Be careful outa here, it's a big world.

@ Wzrd1

I was in the electron microscope club at school

You lucky b@stard. Now I'm drooling and reflecting on my misspent youth.

Jeez, I thought this kind of stuff was more common with Meryl Dorey and her band down in Australia. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given how the anti-vaccine movement has gotten more militant post-SB277.

@Helianthus #5
Yeah, I had basically the same reaction as you when reading her "interesting" position on sexuality. WTF. I suppose she is also against girls going to a gynecologist withtout their parents' permission ?

Yeah, I had basically the same reaction as you when reading her “interesting” position on sexuality. WTF. I suppose she is also against girls going to a gynecologist withtout their parents’ permission ?

Children are propertynot actual people. To the narcissists in the anti-vaccine movement (and that's a whole lot of them) children are merely an extension of themselves.

Quackenhoove can't believe a 12 year old is capable of being exceptional, because a. she has zero grasp of history and b. exceptional people don't frequent her realm.

I am really impressed with this kid, and he's only 12. If I owned a medical school, I would offer him admission in advance right now. I hope he goes that route, and he should put that video and his responses to the flames on his application. He'll be nipping at your heels before you know it.

Marco Arturo is performing a CQI quality check on AVers, showing for all to see that there are no AVers smarter than a 12 year-old. So, of course, AVers being the utter imbeciles they are, fight back with all the grace, manners and intelligence of Biff Tannen from Back to the Future , not realizing the Marco McFly has their number.

This reprehensible behavior of AVers is completely consistent with how they also mistreated students at Carlsbad High School who made the vaccine documentary "Invisible Threat" in 2014 for which AVers gave them flaming piles of AV poop for their efforts ( http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/05/09/antivaccine-activists-atta… ). How much more must it p*ss off AVers when a junior high student rubs their nose in the dirt and shows them the door with the brown suppository. The irony meters are blowing breakers left and right as the same AVers who claim to so care for children (especially their own oh-so-special-and-superior snowflakes) become vicious rabid skunks in going after Marco Arturo. I'm fairly certain had I had the internet growing up I could have attained by age 12 year a level or S & I (snark and insolence) comparable to Marco, who clearly does not suffer AVers one bit.

Quackenboss's pseudonym may be more appropriate than she realizes. The name Levi is derived from the Hebrew word for priest.

Ironic that an anti-vaxxer doesn’t seem to understand how quickly something can spread when it’s viral…

Not ironic at all. They have demonstrated by their opposition to vaccines that they are unclear on that very concept.

I, too, had a fairly large vocabulary when I was 12, and I knew several other kids who did. I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to post a video like that even if the capability had existed back in the day, but some of the other kids I knew might have. I hope Marco sticks with it.

Quackenhoove can’t believe a 12 year old is capable of being exceptional, because a. she has zero grasp of history and b. exceptional people don’t frequent her realm.

.

She and a lot of AVers, judging from the comments reported here and on Epi's blog, including a live one.
Unfortunately, they are not even exceptional in being gullible or unhinged. They display well-distributed human tendencies.
But regarding Quackenboss, I'm tempted to say that the most of the real world doesn't frequent her realm.

@ LouV

I suppose she is also against girls going to a gynecologist without their parents’ permission ?

Oi, that's the position of moderate people (for a specific value of "moderate").
I think she would be against girls going to a gynecologist without their parents, period. Mostly just to be sure the doctor doesn't slip in an HPV vaccine or a French letter.

This does not surprise me in the least. These people care nothing about children, only about themselves. If they really loved children, they wouldn't be so eager to expose fetuses to measles and rubella. Nor would they brag gleefully about watching their children suffer with whooping cough. I say, put them in an iron lung for a day with a bad case of shingles. Yes, I am repeating myself.

Lots of respect for Marco Arturo. He shows he is far more civilised than the anti-vaccinanionists. He fights his opponents with carefully worded arguments, while they can just play the bully, without any arguments to oppose him.

“The antivax movement is a cult, and just like any other cult it is completely unable to tolerate dissent. They behave exactly as scientology does, and for exactly the same reasons.”

I first read that too quickly and thought you were talking about the Climate Changers!
(And you would have been right.)
////////////////

As for Marco, he’s obviously a very precocious pre-teen, with a book already under his belt.
Unfortunately, it was on “evolutionary” biology, among other things.
I’ll cut him some slack. He’s still very young and still has lots of learnin’ to do.

The antivaxxers, some of them, are just in too deep. Their entire lives center around this conspiracy, to the point where finding out it is not true would basically mean to each member that the last X years of his or her life was a waste of time and energy. Kind of like how religious people get mad when you say all their efforts to be rewarded in the afterlife may have been pointless (I don't use that phrase in the discussion, but the idea gets conveyed).

Sadly, and I've said this many times, this belief structure probably won't go away until a community has a large enough anti-vaccidiot population that leads to an epidemic of a preventable disease. Clearly ten or twenty dying to measles isn't enough for them, which is incredibly sad. But one day, an anti-vaccidiot "compound" will emerge, a hundred of them will die of polio, including children who did nothing wrong but listen to their foolish parents. It will be an incredibly sad day. However, research doesn't work, the cult assumes it's all a scam by big pharma. Science doesn't work, again all a paid-for scam. And a dozen infections from Disneyworld doesn't work in California. It will take an awful reminder of the damage these diseases can do.

As for Marco, he’s obviously a very precocious pre-teen, with a book already under his belt. Unfortunately, it was on “evolutionary” biology, among other things.
I’ll cut him some slack. He’s still very young and still has lots of learnin’ to do.

To my knowledge, it's not illegal. It's still doxing and as you say, contemptible.

It's even more hypocritical that people who want to raise the mantel of parents - who presumably care about children - have so little regard for the safety and well being of this precocious and bright boy.

I hope fence sitters consider what this tells us about anti vaccine activists.

I would also add that, as our friend Rene pointed out, the racist and classist undertones of Ms. Charron/Quackenboss' writing are as troubling as the rest of her behavior. Note that her first post about Marco, the one he took down so gracefully in comments on his page, has "Mexican" as one of his category, and she makes multiple references to her belief that living in Mexico means he shouldn't be able to do this.https://epidemiological.net/2016/06/05/the-fear-a-12-year-old-mexican-c…

Not to mention her comments about knock-off polo shirts.

The main thing about her posts is the unconscionable behavior of attacking a child in such an ugly manner. But they also shout privilege and prejudice, I think. Which brings us back to our host's point about the hypocrisy of pretending to stand for minority rights under the banner of the CDCwhistleblower manufactroversy.

The closest I've ever come to being doxxed was someone was an anti-vaxer who didn't like a comment I made, but couldn't refute it, so instead looked at my personal profile and replied with a comment to the effect of "what a surprise, an employee of [X] would be a pro-vax shill". (I worked, then and now, at a certain large software company which used to be run by a guy who the anti-vaxers really, really, really dislike.)

It was disturbing enough that I set up an entire set of different accounts to use when arguing with the anti-science crowd in general. I still use my real name, and if there is ever a situation where my employer might be an issue I reveal it, as they require. But there are no other personal details attached.

It's thin protection since anyone with a half a brain could make the connection. Fortunately, that leaves out the vast majority of anti-vaxers.

Orac, The Latin American hispanic naming convetion tends towards Firstname FathersSurname mothersSurname, with firstname fathersSurname used most for daily use, but I've seen names much more complex and people who use one surname in one situation and another surname in different situations.

@Ren, Orac, and Terrie: yeah, I rather snickered at that part of her idiocy, also. I have Mexican friends, and you'd never believe they are all the same family, based on how they use their surnames. And there are also differences between the various countries, as my Peruvian, Cuban, Puerto Rican and Colombian friends have taught me. What applies for one doesn't apply for others.

So, along with all her other errors, Quackquack Boss is full of it regarding the names. And, as I've said in other places, doxxing is wrong no matter what. It's bad enough when done to an adult. Despicable, to be exact. When done to a child - like Marco and Rhys - it's lower than despicable. It makes them less than human.

That she and her friends feel so very threatened (and unaware of how intelligent many 12 year olds - who are even fully vaccinated - are) shows that they know they don't have anything of substance to support their stance.

"I won't post his full name"
"Here is his stepfather's full name, who he works for and the town he lives in."

The thing about doxing is that even though it's not illegal*, the only reason to do it is to intimidate and facilitate harassment. It may be disguised as a conspiracy theory but this is textbook intimidation:

I’m not going to post his full name out of respect for him and his parents as well as their safety, but they’ve been a little sloppy about making trails to it so they should clean that up.

Oh it is tempting to want to respond in kind but we have to be better. There's no reason we need to know who Quackenboss is unless you plan on harassing her. Remember the saying about wrestling pigs.

*IANAL. Cyber bullying laws may cover it but going after a pseudonymous person across country borders has got to be nigh impossible.

The last names his parents use are not the name that he uses on social media.

And Quackenboss finds this surprising why? Quite aside from Latin America using different naming conventions from English-speaking countries, my instinct is to assume that Arturo is what we would call Marco's middle name: it's the Spanish equivalent of Arthur.

Even under US customs, either his mother would have kept her maiden name, or she would have taken the name of her most recent husband. Since the latter is identified as Marco's stepfather rather than his father, in either case her surname would be different from Marco's.

“The antivaxxers, some of them, are just in too deep. Their entire lives center around this conspiracy…”

I first read that too quickly and thought you were talking about Orac!
…….
To one and all:
I can’t understand about a third of Marco’s machine gun-style delivery. Does anyone else have difficulty listening to him?

If little Marco is going to make a habit of posting his speeches on Youtube, he’d best get a voice coach.

No matter how many times it comes back to bite them in the butt, antivaxxers never seem to get the Streisand effect. Thanks to them, Marco Arturo, who I'd otherwise probably never have heard of, just got his 1,964th subscriber.

I was wondering what the kid could possibly have said to arouse such ire, what deep, dark secrets he revealed, what knock-down arguments he presented that simply had to be silenced by any means necessary - and the video turns out to be a not-terribly-original comedy sketch lasting less than 2 minutes. Seriously, antivaxxers? That's a new low, even for you.

Yeah, some of these anti-vaxxers are pure scum and have nothing better to do than stalk a kid. They are frantically trying to take the video down, reporting his facebook page, and stalking his parents lmao.

The last names his parents use are not the name that he uses on social media.

I know one of the local TV news persons. I have seen her facebook page. You know what? The last name she uses on her facebook page is NOT THE SAME as the name that she uses on TV, or, in fact, uses in real life. In real life, she goes by her name that she uses on TV. However, she doesn't use that on social media, to avoid being recognized.

Awful, isn't it?

BTW, what is the deal with anti-vaxxers and hitting people in the neck? Two of them talk about hitting him in the neck (one will "punt him in the jugular"?) Is this a thing? I've never heard it before. I think it's the same person twice.

Anti-vaxxers are all about protecting children. Well, their own children, which they view as property. Any child that disagrees with them is just a tool (not a person) of some adult. Since they are not an actual child anymore, they are fair game for threats of physical violence and harassment.

I would like to see just one of the big names in the anti-vaccine community condemn every AVer that buys into and promotes Quackenboss' conspiracy theory, racism, and doxxing.

"Update: a buddy of mine joined the Facebook group that we’ve seen over and over again as the pre-May 24th group that made Marco’s video go viral before he made his own page. Turns out that Marco isn’t a member, the video wasn’t put up before his friend Emma posted it on May 24th, and it only had 110 likes over these last two weeks in a massive group with 7,000 members. Nice try. It looks like the Science Enthusiasts had very little interest in what this kid was saying."

Sad day when "adults" bully and harass a child just because the child has different and smarter opinions than they do. While sharing the publicly accessible information may not be illegal, here in the states, a teacher can have harassment charges pressed against them for interacting with a student on Facebook. So that can easily be done with each person bullying Marco.

Also, another note, I am autistic. And as someone who has personally experienced an antivaxer attack on me (under one of my online aliases), I do know how stir crazy they are. They are relentless. Well, get this, it's illegal in the states for someone to harass and bully a disabled person. So they best be checking themselves. When do the autistics get to sue the antivaxers for their hate speech against us?

There's some discussion on Quackenboss' blog about whether Marco's a hoax, funded and produced by what I assume is BIG PHARMA. Lots of hemming and hawwing, ignoring the fact that it actually doesn't matter because his message is correct. He could be funded by the Illuminati, the NSA, aliens, Obama, and my Mama, it doesn't change the fact that vaccine's have no connection to autism.

Who cares what she writes? It is mostly vile and made up. And this was discussed in this article: "Well, if you look at the A Plus post, it tells you. It says, “H/T: A Science Enthusiast,” who had shared Arturo’s video on his Facebook page on May 25."

A major problem with the world is not the pig-ignorant inhabitants, but the DELIBERATELY pig-ignorant inhabitants. The anti-Vaccination people remind me so much of the clowns who claim that astronauts never went to the moon.

Marry Me, Mindy @42: According to some guy friends of mine, when you're mad you say you want to punch someone in the face, because it will hurt. If you're well past mad you way you want to punch someone in the throat because it can kill (and would render them unable to speak for some time).

It is perfectly fine to say "12 year old Mexican boy." He is Mexican. There's nothing wrong with applying that adjective to someone who is Mexican. I'm Mexican. I was born and raised in Mexico.

Now, as Quackenboss has done in saying that he shouldn't be able to do any of these things (or wear a proper Polo shirt) BECAUSE he's Mexican, then, yes, we get into the issue of racism and stereotypes. In fact, Quackenboss has banned me from commenting on her blog because I called her a racist.

Ah, but they're all about open discussion and whatnot, right?

I think this brought out the true character of Quackenboss and her readers. They are terrified of reality in a way that is hard to explain. If a 12 year old Mexican boy can bring this much fear out of them, can imagine how they get when their doctors tell them they're wrong? Or when their friends and neighbors tell them they're wrong?

Oh, G-d, the "campaign by Hear This Well" is even more hilariously stupid than I could have imagined:

If [Walgreens] were involved in the production or promotion of a vaccine advertisement using a fake backyard video as advertising, it is fraudulent and misleading and in violation of the Truth in Advertising law.

What? Could I have some sort of statute here? I still have no idea what this is about:

[Walgreens] did withdraw their sponsorship of the video but they have not issued a statement, and at this point it is not good enough.

Did somebody just see some random Y—be ad and go all A. muscaria or something?

He could be funded by the Illuminati, the NSA, aliens, Obama, and my Mama, it doesn’t change the fact that vaccine’s have no connection to autism.

That's why they perseverate on things like how long the kid's YouTube channel has been up, the fact that he was wearing the same shirt in both videos, etc. It's a distraction from the real issue - the simple fact that they have no evidence to back up their claims in spite of years of activism and research. But if they can convince themselves that there's a conspiracy to silence them then that shows that the powers that be know that their claims have merit - which in turn implies that evidence to back up their claims exists, its just been hidden.

As much as I agree in that she is an ignorant (Marco Arturo are his first and middle names, anyone who knew a bit about spanish would know that), please don't call it "non-european style naming conventions" as... you know, it started in Spain. Spain is in Europe. The spanish naming convention isn't any less european than the english one. Furthermore, as far as I know, there are many other conventions in Europe (Iceland's case was rather interesting, from what I remember).

Personally, I still find hard to believe anyone could think vaccines are bad... Do they have an idea about how bad things were before them? We can live without fear for tuberculosis because everyone in previous generations vaccinated, to put an example.

Im not sure about the leaglity of this kind of doxing. There is a clearly implied threat in posting personal information. Furthermore giving it to people who have expressed wishes to harm the child in question is without a doubt an attempt at inciting violence.
It depends on the local laws, but threatening violence and inciting/facilitating violence towards a child like the anti-vaxxers her have been doing is a felony in most western countries. It should be reported to the police, so that at the very least a file can get built up on these people

One of the YT channels I follow is SeaNanners Gaming Channel, and he has been uploading videos since 2009 almost always wearing what appears to be an identical gray shirt. I wonder what they would make of that.

One more fit of laughter, and I'm going to wind up with a nosebleed: Gerg has been a busy little beaver over at AoA (oh, and here, as rapporteur; oh, G-d, hold on – can this cause orthostatic syncope? – OK, deep breaths, walk into another room every few words).

He seems to have dimly and bizarrely "perceive" the asymmetry, which nobody there even acknowledged* (mentioned) in the first place. Hence this:

Seems like responsible journalism to me and Quackenboss should be credited. Should someone, instead, passively report on a matter under a 'nym, and in no way make himself part of the story, then I can see why it would be 'appropriate' to respect privacy.

I can't go on; someone's stopping by, and some measure of composure is required.

Im not sure about the leaglity of this kind of doxing. There is a clearly implied threat in posting personal information. Furthermore giving it to people who have expressed wishes to harm the child in question is without a doubt an attempt at inciting violence.

Marcus, there are a number of moving parts here, but the most important one is that the perpetrator and the victim live in different countries. I don't know anything about Mexican law (oh, and I should repeat that IANAL), but I really, strongly doubt that there is any "true threat" under U.S. law, much less "incitement." Nobody's extraditing anybody.

What might be amusing in the extreme would be a civil suit. Filed in Colorado.

Seems like responsible journalism to me and Quackenboss should be credited. Should someone, instead, passively report on a matter under a ‘nym, and in no way make himself part of the story, then I can see why it would be ‘appropriate’ to respect privacy.

Greg isn't the only denizen of AoA breaking irony meters left and right today.

But then there is this:

I thought the video was staged because the kid started with saying: Good Evening Ladies & Gentlemen.
I don't know the time setting for the video but it didn't look like evening to me.

I am lost for words to describe the idiocy contained in these comments.

I've been thinking about this, and I have to pick my words carefully or I'll wind up in moderation.
Doxxing anyone is improper. Doxxing a child is dangerous. It gives those who, shall we say, target children for improper purposes, a location.
It should be illegal, even though it isn't.

the video wasn’t put up before his friend Emma posted it on May 24th, and it only had 110 likes over these last two weeks in a massive group with 7,000 members. Nice try. It looks like the Science Enthusiasts had very little interest in what this kid was saying.

Playing popularity contest, like she was still in college prom?

And now, more than 7 million views and counting.
Quanckenboss will have to look up the Streisand effect.

@Narad 64: the law in question is Title 15 USC, subchapter 1, sections 52-54. This law grants the FTC broad authority to define "false advertising" and punish their publishers. The FTC currently defines payed but undisclosed product endorsements as such. This video is a bit different since it's broadly endorsing an entire class of products rather than any specific one, but then again, a tobacco company secretly paying people to say "smoking is safe!" can be a violation even if they don't mention a specific brand.

I find it totally convincing, btw, that Walgreens, a company with 370,000 employees and over $100 billion in annual sales, felt the need to pay a 12-year-old to make a youtube video to save its vaccine program.

I also find it amusing that the same people who think the FDA and CDC are part of a conspiracy might also think the FTC will come to the rescue. You dummies, the whole government is in on it!

@capnkrunch #73: You made me LOL with this: "Well, Gorski would like to point out that it is explicit in the A+ Media article that H-T, a science enthusiast, is credited with sharing it"

Thanks for pulling that line out. My lord, Gurgles is really ignorant. Who on earth, in these days of the internet, doesn't understand that H/T means "hat tip" or, in more words "thanks to X for pointing this out to me".

Or is there some evil Pharma minion named H/T that Lord Draconis just hired on? I never get the new minion memos.

Posting names, addresses, phone numbers, workplaces of people you don't like isn't illegal per se.

But if you take that information and contact the person or worse their job, that's harassment and stalking and that IS illegal! If you post said information with the intent it be used that way, then you open yourself to a charge of incitement.

The only thing that protects people like Quackenboss is the fact law enforcement is generally clueless when it comes to Internet crimes, so enforcement is very difficult.

This woman is a textbook bully, the kind that likes picking the wings off flies.

I too have been following Gerg on AoA.
J-sus, what a half wit! ( I'm being kind)

Orac's newer minions might enjoy learning that Gerg spent weeks and weeks f@cking with... I mean *interacting with* and
*debating* at RI. I imagine most of you can guess how well that turned out for him.

Off topic entirely....
What is up with all the "G-d" and "J-sus" references by some commenters today? I'm an atheist but it is not offensive to write out God or Jesus. There is no Christian rule you aren't allowed to use the actual name of your (fictional) deity.

"12-Year-Old Vaccine Boy Update/Partial Retraction
I wanted to post a video update to the VaccineBoy hoax story but I have a raging sunburn on my head/face from being the Daddy Express for 4 hours at a pool party this weekend and the lizard skin effect I'm sporting would just not be that pleasant. I have spent the last 48 hours obsessing over every little detail of this thing and I mean every little detail, down to hair styles and conflicting shirt collars. I wanted to retract one or two things from my original video and confirm a couple of other things. Before I do, let me just say this: As adult like as this kid talks, please remember that he's just a kid and that he may not have the emotional fortitude that you or I do. Social media can make instastars of anyone, whether they're ready for it or not. I've gotten less than .1% of the traffic his video has and it has caused me some lost sleep. I'm sure he and his family are no different. I realize that his thoughtless, fact-free video drivel was hurtful and made it easy to hate him. Don't. Channel it towards change. I will show you how. Keep watching. We can do this.
Here are my partial retractions:
1) I don't believe the Vaccine video was shot on a professional camera anymore. I believe it was shot on an iPad. I did some eye-alignment tests using the front-facing camera on my iPad Air (shot in Landscape mode with front-facing camera on my left), and looking at the right of the screen to align a paper I was holding produced similar eyelines as the kid. I also noticed the exposure changing whenever he brought in and out the paper- something that a professional camera would likely not do (pro camera operators don't use auto-exposure very often).
2) I don't believe the APlus media writer knew about the video before it went up. I spoke at length with her, twice over the past two days and she has convinced me she found the post organically through a Facebook group she follows (not a member of) called A Science Enthusiast. She is an avowed Believer, I realize. She could be lying to protect an elaborate PR set up, but I think she is telling me the truth.
Here is what I have confirmed, which will be at odds with 1 and 2.
1) Many people have suggested (including the Aplus writer) that Google dated the suspect articles May 24th because that was the date on the content embedded within the post. Ergo: You create an article on June 8th that contains a Facebook video from May 24th and Google will show May 24th as the day that article was created. I have not found this behavior anywhere I've looked, and the two SEO experts I spoke with have never heard of this behavior. In fact, I went through 20 Aplus articles that contained embedded content from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Vimeo and I never found a single instance of Google dating the article based on the embedded content. Similarly, I went through a couple of articles on Babble that contained embedded content and was unable to find a single instance of Google dating articles based on embedded content.
That means there were still 4 VaccineBoy articles I could find that have May 24th dates on them. If you do the Google search now, you may see different dates than I showed in the original video because of updates done to the page. Regardless, the dates won't move backwards, only forwards. The author of one of the articles has me convinced they didn't know about the video until May 27th. But still, Google says May 24th. I can't explain it any other way than the articles, or placeholders for them, were up on that day.
There are still strange things about this that befuddle me. Why is he wearing the same thing in both videos, but the wear and tear on his shirt makes it look 3 months older in the Portrait video.
I still believe that there is money behind this kid, that someone is dropping some dosh or working very hard to make him an Instastar. Perhaps vaccines just happened to come up on the radar. Perhaps he will never talk about them again. We'll see. I'm more than happy to have him on my show. We can play Ping-Pong if he doesn't want to debate vaccines. Loser admits the winner is correct in their belief.
I look forward to more videos from me that have nothing to do with a 12-year-old kid regurgitating bullet points from a 30 year old pharma rep brochure. I hope you do too. And that is my incredible opinion."

@Dorit Reiss #89, isn't it just so cute when the clueless try to perform a forensic investigation on anything whatsoever?
Subjective opinion gets substituted for actual scientific findings, cluelessness in specific technologies result in odd speculations and misunderstanding of other technological interactions creates spurious speculations being reported as fact.

No, the video wasn't shot on 4 June, it was encoded on that date by Google. Indeed, the original video may well not have been encoded into an .mp4 container, but converted by Google into .mp4.
Not that our intrepid, if clueless sleuth would actually comprehend that.
BTW, what is the "lizard skin effect"? I've been sunburned many a time, typically, once per season, my skin never had any characteristic akin to lizard skin. Is the OP admitting to not being human? ;)
Yeah, I didn't think that was it either.

"But if you take that information and contact the person or worse their job, that’s harassment and stalking and that IS illegal! If you post said information with the intent it be used that way, then you open yourself to a charge of incitement."

When I was doxed with both my home and work information, the police stated that because both pieces of information are public record, there was no crime. Even though both instances of doxing were accompanied by encouragement to "destroy me."

My work information is still being passed around cyberspace with encouragement to harass me at work and contact my employer demanding that I be fired, and I've been informed that there's nothing I can do about it.

Don't forget section 55 ("the extent to which the advertisement fails to reveal facts material in the light of such representations or material with respect to consequences which may result from the use of the commodity to which the advertisement relates"). I'm too tired to do real cites at the moment, but in 1983 (PDF), the basic idea is misleading reasonable consumers.

This video is a bit different since it’s broadly endorsing an entire class of products rather than any specific one, but then again, a tobacco company secretly paying people to say “smoking is safe!” can be a violation even if they don’t mention a specific brand.

1. Is it an endorsement? (If so, is there adequate substantitation for the representations?) I haven't gotten around to watching it, because I generally don't watch Y—be videos. This is in the purview of 16 CFR 255.

2. Would a conglomerate of greengrocers secretly producing a staged Y—be video endorsing the "fruits and vegetables" "class of products" represent a commensurate FTCA violation to the smoking example? (Fake PSAs appear to drawn little attention other than from the usual AM radio "free trial" of "proven remedy" category.)

And that's the end of my ruminating on a category of law that I don't have time to whomp up something resembling a sensible overview of.

Note that the two blockquotes in my comment were in reverse order from the original. Where the hell does this "sponsorship" bit come from in the first place? If "it" was "revoked," how could it have been surreptitious in the first place? Again, this appears to be simple raving:

If [Walgreens] were involved in the production or promotion of a vaccine advertisement using a fake backyard video as advertising, it is fraudulent and misleading and in violation of the Truth in Advertising law.

I'm getting exactly six G—le hits for "the Truth in Advertising Law." In fact, it's struck me a couple of times as having the distinct ring of a UKian construction. I didn't bother looking around the FB page, because I have a reaction similar to some ex-smokers about the racket, but it turns out that HTW is Polly "That's What I Call a Big Tree!" Tommey.

Too true. At this point, I advise people with anti-vax friends to dump 'em because it's only a matter of time before the anti-vax people start being horrible. Even if I'd known someone from the time they were teeny, the minute they start buying into the anti-vax thing, we're done. (Though I might still pretend to be friends, in case they have kids who need a lifeline. Most anti-vaxxers are one bad day away from killing their kids.)

Monsanto et.al. have deleted the Gene HMDB25030 from all their patented food and feed seeds and their patented vegetables foods and it is missing from nearly all processed food as well because it breaks down at 210F during the preparation of processed foods. It is the compound that represents most of the Immune System of Plants and the ONLY compound in foods that our Immune System incorporates directly into our Immune and Cellular Repair Systems to protect Neutrophils internally from the compounds produced to Kill Bacteria and Process Vaccines.
It is responsible for the production, in Human and all mammalian metabolic systems, of a Single Antioxidant, Thiocyanate (HMDB01453), which is the ONLY antioxidant the Immune System can utilize inside of Neutrophils to Process Vaccines, Remove Heavy Metals (including viruses and even readioactive particles in the presence of Iodide), repair wounds, kill bacteria, rebuild muscles, repair aging host cells, kill cancer cells before they can divide out of control and much, much more. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1290469.files/PMN%20review.p…
A normal Minimum Daily Requirement of HMDB35030 in the diet would be 1 mg. per 3 pounds of body weight from vegetables and food grains (non-GM, non-GMO and non-processed foods including soy baby formulas and baby food in jars have NONE now).
A 2014 study done to check Amygdalin Content of Foods in the UK clearly shows less than a few 100ths of what should be in the foods listed instead of the naturally occuring amounts which should fall between .1- 17 mg. per gram of food. Statistically, because of the wide variance of HMDB35030 content of the many foods tested, there should be a similar ratio in the processed foods but they are consistantly Completely Devoid of the Essential Nutrient across the variety spectrum.
The undeniable importance of Thiocyanate in the Human Metabolic System is clearly detailed in this well done research: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20515.long
Where has all the HMDB35030 and the resulting Essential Metabolic Compound HMDB01453, Thiocyanate gone and why? The ‘why’ is Trillions of dollars in profit for the medical industry made in treating the symptoms of Thiocyanate Deficiency in Vaccine Induced Child Autism, Gulf War Syndrome, MS, Cystic Fibrosis, Fibromyaglia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and many other diseases with ‘unknown causes’ related to the dysfunctional neutraphils which self-destruct in the presence of a Thiocyanate Deficieny.
Give us back our HMDB35030!

@Narad - thanks, because I really didn't want to bother, but the phrase "to protect Neutrophils internally from the compounds produced to Kill Bacteria and Process Vaccines" caught my eye. Will doesn't appear to understand how neutrophils work. Unless he thinks they only became "kamikaze" cells since the introduction of GM crops, and that our immune systems have undergone a massive evolutionary shift in the past 50 years or so to compensate...for some reason I find the notion oddly intriguing.

Writing this for the benefit of anyone who is wondering how much of what Will Wiegman's rant is true: None of it.

Laetrile/Amygdalin/B17/HMDB35030 is a plant compound that has no function in the human body. No in vivo studies have ever found laetrile to be beneficial for anything, and in fact it is quite toxic. The genes to make it have not been modified in any monsanto crop.

Laetrile is at the center of a paranoid conspiracy theory that truly is a testament to the ability of some people to invent nonsense from whole cloth. The vaccine angle is something I haven't heard of before - usually laetrile is touted as a cancer cure. Truly a miracle molecule!

I'm really hoping these kinds of vicious attacks help publicize and help Marco Arturo's cause. He may have been obscure if it weren't for them. In other words, walking turds like Quackenboss will hopefully be their own undoing.

My only comment, and perhaps someone else has already made this point, but "Mexican" is not a race, and being anti-Mexican doesn't make you racist. Now, that doesn't excuse being irrationally biased against people from a certain country or region; i just take exception to the imprecise terminology, and given the fact that real racism is a global problem, i think it's important to keep the distinction.

If humans were plants, cyanide might be an important immune system modulator. Alas (or fortunately) we are not, with the exception of certain people who seem to have the intelligence of plants, at least some of the more primitive ones.

The Monsanto freakout in relation to cyanide is a new one for me. I would've expected anti-GMOers to accuse the company of _incorporating_ a cyanide-producing gene in their modified crop plants.

Semi-hilariously, this alarmist had to issue a correction when it turned out that the offending grass was a "naturally"-bred hybrid, and not GMO at all. But we must be vigilant because...it could happen!!!!!!!!!

@wzrd1 '90, when he refers to lizard skin he's describing how sunburnt skin can take on a scaly pattern just before the stage at which the skin starts peeling. As a child I was very sensitive to the sun, being very pale skinned with white hair until I was about 8. I was so sensitive that I almost literally only had to show my skin to the sun to get badly sunburnt, obviously an exaggeration, but an hour in the early afternoon sun in the UK summer really was enough, and after a while, that was the type of scaly pattern that would develop on the worst parts. Fortunately, by my early to mid teens I had largely grown out of the worst of the sensitivity but still don't like summer much.

Of course she did. Because it's always the vaccines. Even when it's a hate-fueled asshat, it has to be vaccines. And autism. Because autism makes people into horrible, violent, killing monsters. I wonder if that's the same view Kim has for her three autistic daughters (one of whom is completely unvaccinated).

I really hate how these people characterize autism, especially when their own children are autistic. Absolutely reprehensible.

Agreed.
I especially hate how she describes their challenges- including private ones- so publicly or posts videos of them having difficulties with simple school/ speech tasks as well as some entertainment television choices which reflect their ID

Someday these girls might read or see her work.

Then she goes on and on about how 'beautiful' they are!

There's something really wrong with this and with her!

Personally I think that she and other warrior parents who think themselves terribly brilliant and nearly perfect are quite miffed that their kids have an ID.

Todd W: I wonder if that’s the same view Kim has for her three autistic daughters (one of whom is completely unvaccinated).
I really hate how these people characterize autism, especially when their own children are autistic. Absolutely reprehensible.

Of course she thinks of them as monsters, she just can't admit it because" nice" suburban moms don't have those feelings. I really think most of the Age of Autism ladies would be happier if they abandoned their families, but " nice" women don't do that, even when they only had the babies to fit in, not because they actually wanted children in the first place. Anti-vaxxers are why I think autistic kids shouldn't be raised by their families; as I noted elsewhere, anti-vaxxers are one bad day away from killing off their kids, even the non-autistic ones. Robot manned creches would at least give autistic children the chance to survive to adulthood.

Off topic, I know, but just thought I’d make the observation that Kim Stagliano over at Age of Autism has implied the Orlando massacre is linked to autism and shots (ie vaccines).

The comments, including Cynthia Parker's fantasy about how her pistol-packin' papa would have taken care of this in a jiffy (and calmly returned to his drink, one imagines), are precisely what one would expect when the AoA commentariat tries to apply their skills to an unrelated subject.

On the bright side, though, in another thread, the painfully self-impressed Kostoff came up with this gem:

"I came across a paper to that effect this morning on a completely unrelated topic. To paraphrase [sic]: 'It has been previously shown that mixtures of toxic chemicals containing at least one lipophilic and one hydrophilic agent produce effects NOT PREDICTABLE FROM THE KNOWN TOXICOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL SPECIES....'"

I took dingo199's comment to mean Stagliano implied Omar Mateen had an ASD. She didn't. Her point was, uhh, more of a grand (loopy) metaphor. "Shots. With bullets. Shots. With syringes. Injury... Industry profits." For her, in each case, government has failed to protect its citizens, by inaction in limiting access to military weapons, and by action 'forcing' vaccination via laws like SB277. So gun manufacturers = pharmaceutical companies, and the dead at the Pulse = the children 'destroyed' by autism. (Yeah, I'm just shakin' my head, even though that's just about every post AoA has ever published...)

Jake apparently has a strange view of what constitutes satire. Hit: It needs to be clever and amusing, and his post is neither. Let's just say The Onion, Gomerblog, Knudsen's News, etc. don't have anything to worry about.

This group of scientists, physicians and environmental activists has singled out lead, air pollutants, flame retardants, PCBs, organophosphate insecticides and (ahem) mercury.

"The developing fetus is continuously exposed to a mixture of environmental chemicals (Mitro et al. 2015). A 2011 analysis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) biomoni toring data found that 90% of pregnant women in the United States have detectable levels of 62 chemicals in their bodies, out of 163 chemicals for which the women were screened (Woodruff et al. 2011)...
Summary: Children in America today are at an unacceptably high risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders that affect the brain and nervous system including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disabilities, and other learning and behavioral disabilities. These are complex disorders with multiple causes—genetic, social, and environmental. The contribution of toxic chemicals to these disorders can be prevented...
The TENDR Consensus Statement is a call to action to reduce exposures to toxic chemicals that can contribute to the prevalence of neuro developmental disabilities in America’s children. The TENDR authors agree that widespread exposures to toxic chemicals in our air, water, food, soil, and consumer products can increase the risks for cognitive, behavioral, or social impairment, as well as specific neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder...We call on businesses to eliminate neuro developmental toxicants from their supply chains and products, and on health professionals to integrate knowledge about environmental toxicants into patient care and public health practice."

Going further, an op-ed by a Cleveland-area pediatrician involved in the project declares that these experts "have concluded that further study is no longer a sufficient response", deciding to "move from research to action".

I stopped indulging in fantasies of people I didn't like getting arrested or harmed after I became 9-year old.

@ Dangerous Bacon

This group of scientists, physicians and environmental activists has singled out lead, air pollutants, flame retardants, PCBs, organophosphate insecticides and (ahem) mercury.

"singled out"? This looks more like "arrest the usual suspects".

*ahem*

"Our chief suspect is lead... lead and air pollutants... air pollutants and lead.... Our two suspects are air pollutants and lead...and mercury... Our *three* suspects are air pollutants, lead, and mercury... and organophosphate insecticides.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our suspects.... Amongst our suspects...are such elements as air pollutants, lead.... I'll come in again."

Well, on the side of lead and mercury (elemental or organically bioavailable forms), they are indeed the usual suspects.
Lead is common in our water system and post-Flint, many, many cities have identified high lead levels in the drinking water.
As for organophosphate insecticides, I'd give that a maybe. While they do bind receptors, the receptors are replaced fairly often. Around 18 months after no further exposure, symptoms should regress, at a maximum.

As for the rest of your comment, I couldn't agree more. I'll blame cell phones effects upon butterflies in may or something and be equally accurate.

But, let's examine medical advances in the latter portion of the 20th century. Smallpox eliminated around 35% of people. Various other, now vaccine preventable diseases also eliminated enough people to account for nearly 45% of every person born, most in childhood.
So, vaccines are indeed responsible for our observed uptick in autism - after all, they'd have been dead without our vaccines.

Sorry, Jake, but I've operated in developing nations. I know about their sanitation levels, food intake and precisely what a measles outbreak that coincides with a polio outbreak looks like. The latter haunts my dreams, even to this very day, resulting in my higher than considered healthy ethanol intake.
Maybe you'll understand that when you've managed to reproduce and then respond to a major epidemic and see those tiny graves filled.

While this is responding to Helianthus, I'm also responding to Jake's idiocy above, again.
As for "the usual suspects", heh, it's amazing how often that idea has proved wrong. One learns when one actually looks and doesn't have preconceptions.
Lest one arrive at the conclusion that autism is caused by oxygen consumption and then drive to eliminate all free oxygen from the atmosphere. Or, for that matter, the same commonality is present for cancer, finding for the same non-solution.

Jake wanders into RI, and instead of educating us about all the things right or wrong about a clinical trial that is under current discussion, reopens a thread that has been dormant for a week or so, just to tell us about his wet dream?

the consensus statement by Project TENDR makes clear that the environmental causes of autism have been conclusively determined.

No it doesn't. It's a political manifesto to "call on policy makers to take seriously the need to reduce exposures of all children to lead". It includes a list of "prime examples of toxic chemicals that can contribute to learning, behavioral, or intellectual impairment" (my emphasis) and also lists examples of common neurodevelopmental disorders to which some of these chemicals 'could contribute'. It doesn't say anything about which chemicals "can contribute" to which disorders, how much they might contribute, what levels of the chemical might be required, or what the risk level of any contribution might be. This appears to be purposefully both vague and as-broad-as-possible to give it more political 'oomph'. That is, the central claim amounts to no more than 'the proliferation of toxic chemicals in the environment has contributed to the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders,' – hardly a stretch given Flint – but the language attempting to amplify that appears designed to be insinuatingly scary, so as to better support the 'call to action'.

Following the trail of citations leading away from the Consensus Statement, the one environmental risk factor claimed to be a significant risk factor for autism is air pollution, having shown a statistically significant association in five-out-of-five studies reviewed. However, these studies apparently disagreed on WHICH pollutant constitutes the risk factor, and the author (B. P. Lamphear) wrote these "studies only cast a dim light on various potential risk factors for the development of ASD". He concludes "replication is essential for determining whether specific components of air pollution are risk factors for ASD" and studies... "that can measure exposures that occur during critical developmental windows are critical for exploring risk factors for ASD."

AV's may well see "autism" and "Mercury" mentioned in the same document and imagine it has some relevance to vaccines, and offers 'scientific validation' to their beliefs. But it doesn't. And if we looked askance at things just because AVs fantasize those things confirm their unshakeable foundational principles, that would be, errrr, 'stupid'.

Following the trail of citations leading away from the Consensus Statement, the one environmental risk factor claimed to be a significant risk factor for autism is air pollution, having shown a statistically significant association in five-out-of-five studies reviewed.

I've blogged about a few such studies over the years—just type "autism air pollution" in the search box of this blog if you're curious—and they're virtually all very poorly done.

sadmar, I think you need to take your sarcasm detector in for repairs. Dangerous Bacon has been here long enough for anyone to realise he was being very sarcastic.
On a side note, has anyone seen or heard anything about Krebiozen? I haven't seen a comment from him in several months now.

Jake put a post up 2 1/2 weeks ago, asking his many supporters to sign a petition to "Remove Steve Silberman as the Closing Keynote Speaker from the 47th National ASA Conference". Silberman was scheduled to speak tomorrow.

100 signatures was the goal, and after 3 weeks, the petition has ended, with a total of 97 signatures, including at least 1 duplicate, Jake himself, and his mama.

Heh. I checked back recently only to find that Jake's response to the failure of the PNAS paper to appear was that there was a "delay in submission" (quote from memory). Wait? It was supposed be published over a month ago, and now the submission date is being invoked? WTF? Has nobody suggested that a Ph.D. student should figure out something about the publishing process?

Anyway, after I got over that, I also noticed that the petition was three votes shy but didn't check the signatures.

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